Book Talk: Negative Originals: Race and Early Photography in Colombia
October 17 on Zoom • 12 Noon EST • 5pm BST
Event held via Zoom • Registration Link
Photography Network membership is required to attend.
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Juanita Solano Roa as she discusses her groundbreaking new book, Negative Originals: Race and Early Photography in Colombia. In this talk, Dr. Roa will share insights into her research journey and the process of transforming her dissertation into a published book.
In Negative Originals, Juanita Solano Roa explores race and identity through photographic practices in late nineteenth-century Medellín, Colombia. Focusing on the photographic studios of Fotografía Rodríguez and Benjamín de la Calle, Solano Roa examines the visual construction and dissemination of racial ideologies and the linkage of race to progress. She studies both positive and negative prints to highlight the juxtaposition of traditional portraiture, which reinforced prevailing racial ideologies, and subversive depictions of often excluded individuals such as cross-dressers, peasants, the poor, and Afro-Colombians. In redefining photography’s role, Solano Roa shifts the critic’s eye from traditional positive prints to negatives, exposing the form’s material, symbolic, and spatial significance. In doing so, she simultaneously uncovers new perspectives on the medium and challenges hegemonic histories. Engaging one of Latin America’s most important photographic archives, Solano Roa addresses urgent gaps in the history of Colombian and Latin American photography, particularly at the intersection of race, gender, and the construction of whiteness.
About the speaker:
Juanita Solano Roa is Associate Professor of Art History at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Her research examines the history of photography in Latin America, the relationship between art and food, and modern and contemporary Latin American art.
She is the author of Negative Originals: Race and Early Photography in Colombia (Duke University Press, 2025) and co-author of Historias del Arte en Colombia (Ediciones Uniandes, 2022). Recent essays, co-authored with Blanca Serrano, include “Absence and Repair: Encounters between the Photographic Archive of the United Fruit Company and Banana Craze’s Database of Contemporary Art of the Americas,” forthcoming in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (2025), and “Ecofeminism and Bananas in Contemporary Art” in Nourish & Resist (Yale University Press, 2024).
Her work has received multiple distinctions, including the Best Article on Latin American Art Award from the Association for Latin American Art (2022) and the Joan and Stanford Alexander Award (2015). She is also co-author of the digital humanities project Banana Craze, recognized internationally with the Garfinkel Prize in Digital Humanities (2022) and a Webby Award nomination (2025).